


Titanium

by JoAsakura



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Cyborg!76, Cyborgs, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-07 08:54:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11055600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: Some gritty cyberpunk noir for Prettyarbitrary and Orenjimaru in honour of Jack's ridiculous cyborg Anniversary skin.In the geographical middle of nowhere, a busted up pile of meat and metal named Jack Morrison finds a new fight.





	1. THE CITY

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PrettyArbitrary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/gifts), [orenjimaru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orenjimaru/gifts).



The city juts out of the steppe like a series of broken cement teeth, up into the low clouds, yellow and thick from the few reclaimed soviet-era factories that survived the omnic crisis and the barely quarter-assed rebuilding in the decades that followed. Yurts, crammed into every open lot, wave with banners and flags stark against the weathered grey blocks.

Jack steps out of the bus, a gas-powered relic that smells like goats, and stretches, feeling the motor linkages in his back pop. In the corner of his eye a red light flickers and he sets the maintenance subroutine in the background.

 _Again_.

The cold, dry air stings against his face, and Jack pushes his glasses up his nose against the thin yellow glare of the sun. The artificial irises are a thousand more times responsive than his old ones, but they're clearly not human. The left one stutters and Jack sighs, resisting the urge to whack himself in the head like an old TV as he steps around a herd of horses grazing in an overgrown parking lot.

The few roads through the City (perched somewhere between Mongolia and China and Russia, had a name once, erased from everyone's maps when no one wanted to be responsible for it in the wake of the Crisis) are jammed. Locals decorate their motorcycles like they do their horses, ribbons and mirrors winking in the hazy sun as they zip in between battered military transports repurposed as buses and shitty-cheap post-war cars.

Jack hoists the old duffle bag and taps out a gaulouise from a rumpled pack, pushing through the pedestrian traffic. It's a place where you go to disappear with fifty thousand or more other deserters, expats and the odd rich western kid looking for enlightenment and finding nothing but an empty bottle and emptier wallet.

"Would you like to hear the word of the Iris?" The omnic monk murmurs from it's perch on the corner, nearby bowl filled with credit chits and coins Jack doesn't recognise.

"Only if the Iris can point me to The Foundry," Jack replies, fumbling for a coin in his pocket. The haptics in his hands are garbage, and it takes a few tries to grasp the sliver of metal.

"The Foundry, it burns everything away, and makes nothing in return but pain," the monk says softly, levitating the bowl to meet Jack's gloved hand. It smooths the tattered saffron cotton of it's trousers. "Would you like me to look at your hands? There's a break somewhere in the fine motor control microfluidics. Your arms weren't meant to deal the sort of damage you force them to." The bowl lands silently as the delicate metal hands reaching out to him.

Jack's left eye stutters again and he yanks his hand back. "No," he growls, looking down at the safety orange fibres of his arm peeking out from the filthy cuff of his anorak. A fourth-party knockoff of one of Angela's designs, they are. 3D printed in a back alley body shop and if he sits quietly, in the dark, he can still feel the ruins of his old ones.

The omnic tips its head, blue lights flickering in what Jack takes to be pity. "You'll find me when you need me." When it offers the bowl again, there's a sliver of paper in it. "Life and death, they're whimsical today."

Expecting an address, Jack scowls when he looks at the single word scrawled onto it. "Sparrow," he says out loud and the omnic shrugs.

"I like birds."


	2. THE FOUNDRY

The Foundry smells like burning hair and diesel, and Jack almost wishes they'd taken his sense of smell when they'd replaced his damaged eyes. The security lounging out front doesn't smell much better.

A chunky Russian in a uniform that stopped fitting right too many mods and pounds back, more polymer and titanium than meat, takes a swig from a bottle and Jack can almost hear his cheap eye refocusing on him at a distance as he weaves through traffic. An omnic beside him, their head half-folded in on one side, fingers drumming furiously as they play cards with an old man, brown face wrinkled like an old apple beneath the thick motorcycle goggles and fur hat.

The Russian makes a great show of looking at the ostentatious gold watch at his wrist and his eye whizzes loudly again as he glares at Jack. "You're late." Overhead, a neon sign winks in Cyrillic advertising "Fresh Meat".

He can't tell if it's a joke.

"Fuck you too," Jack says instead, sucking on his crumpled cigarette while the red lights wink in his HUD in strenuous objection. "I'm only here because Maurice called in a... favour. This isn't the easiest place to find."

"Foreigners and your jokes. This is the middle of nowhere, I'm told, and one would think the middle of anything would be easy enough to find," the wrinkled little man says without looking up, then adds, "Pat him down."

Jack feels the Russian's glance slide over him like a greasy touch before his hands even reach out, and he catches one meaty paw in his own, servos whining softly as he closes ever so gently on the man's wrist. "Touch me and it will be the last thing you ever do, big boy."

The monk was right, the microfluidic controllers in his hand are in bad shape, and Jack flags the repair command for priority over his back as he applies just the smallest bit more pressure, watching the Russian's face turn red, then white as he sweats in the cold, dry air.

There's a wink of motion in his peripheral vision, the omnic shooting to their feet and Jack feels the corner of his mouth twitch with an involuntary grin.

"I think... I think he's clean." The Russian croaks, knees buckling just as Jack backfists the omnic, the AI's face ringing like a bell as he folds another section of it in, more red lights flashing in his HUD.

"I just want to get this over with," Jack lets go of the Russian as the omnic clatters to their metal behind on the filthy sidewalk.

The old man's eyes narrow comically behind the goggles and he laughs. "Don't we all, boy. Don't we all."


	3. FRESH MEAT

The Foundry looks like an actual foundry and a casino had a baby with an abattoir and while it's revolting, Jack appreciates the dedication to it's particular aesthetic. The floor is sticky, a mess of blood and omnic ichor, smears of expensive alcohol spiked with sequins and tufts of fur.

Or hair. He's not sure either way and his all-too-human stomach lurches just a little bit at the sound of titanium and carbon fibre peeling off of concrete with every step he takes.

A few slot machines ding and jingle in the darkness, waiting for the people to come and pump them full of credit chits. Somewhere overhead, there's muffled bass, a sound check for the evening's festivities.

(During the Crisis, they'd spent a night in a place like this, filled with rich people descending into diamond-spangled barbarism, waiting for the end of the world, while the poor had died on their doorstep.

Reinhardt tore the barricade down and they'd funneled a hundred people into the tunnels while a handful of the rich and powerful had cried, more at the invasion of their private space, than the injuries of the children in Jack and Gabriel's arms.

Gabriel had liberated a five-thousand dollar bottle of rose champagne and a bowl of definitely endangered caviar and they'd made messy love in a bathroom that had been more expensively furnished than every place either of them had lived, combined. Gabriel fucking him against the polished mirrors, Jack had come hard enough that he'd torn a gold-plated faucet off the marble countertop and flooded the room.

Everyone had had fresh water that night, and Ana hadn't made him explain why.)

Jack takes another sticky, peeling step across the floor and targets the owner in the neon gloom as the smell shakes him out of his memories. She sits in a red velvet banquette, the massive chains of the Foundry's original purpose curving overhead, overhead lights flickering through the rusted links. "Mister King," she chirps, sipping a thick green shake through a straw.

In the shadow of her hulking security team, human and omnic alike, she's tiny, birdlike, orange-tan skin and white hair coiffed and set so sculputrally, he would swear it was carved out of frosted glass, not unlike her expensive Swarovski eyes. Jack could snap her in half without much thought, but she beckons him to approach, and he's fascinated by the way the fragile tendons shift under the sleeve of her silk blouse as she motions. "You're late."

"Maurice didn't exactly give me great directions... Director?" Jack sets down his duffel bag and moves to sit before he's stopped by one of the gorillas at her side (Winston would be offended by that comparison, he thinks, disliking the pang of nostalgia. Brutes, then.) and Jack tenses for a fight.

Her lacquered, wrinkled lips part in a yellow-toothed smile. "Yes, well, I understand you owe Maurice a significant debt. May I see what you're made of?" She lifts a painted eyebrow and Jack weighs his options.

He unzips the tattered camo anorak and she gestures, imperiously with the straw until he peels off his gloves and the faded black t-shirt he's been wearing so long, it's hard to tell where the smell of smoke and oil and sweat and booze soaked into the fabric ends, and where the same scents on his flesh and metal begin.

In the dim lighting, the orange polymer strands in his arms glow and Jack sets his hands on his hips. He hates the alien feel of his own fingers on his skin but before he can hook his thumbs in his belt loops, the director slides out of her seat and pads over to him. "Maurice said you were fit," she purrs, one long nail tapping the scarred edge of where artificial muscle met human flesh. "He undersold it."

Jack glares down at her, artificially blue eyes burning over the edge of his glasses as she runs a finger down the mangled plane of his belly to where the scruff of old silver hair meets the edge of his battered BDU trousers. "I'm here to fight someone and then leave, Director." Jack growls and she withdraws her hand like she meant to. "I'm not here for a fashion show."

"The boys will show you to your room, Mister King. Or do you prefer 76? I hear that's what you call yourself? There's some refreshments and a charging station. I suspect you're in need of a little top off," The Director turns away from him. "Oh, and I'd leave the shirt off for tonight. People like a little meat with their metal."


	4. SPARROW

The room is small, clean and sparse. Jack's slept in places that would make a dumpster blush, so anyplace with clean sheets and a significant lack of tetanus threats is a luxury. There's a thermos with some green gunk that tastes like spirulina and wheatgrass in it and he chokes it down before tapping the panel on the wall.

It springs to life, a newscaster reading farm reports in Russian as Jack pads into the bathroom. (Even if he didn't speak Russian, or Mandarin, farm reports sound the same in every language he's ever known. There's a comforting symmetry in that, he thinks, gagging down another swallow of the green goop).

There's a small stool in the shower and for a moment he grimaces, then sets down, releasing the vacuum on his legs. They came off a scrapped Norwegian power armour frame, a fact Jack is reminded of every time he damages one, replacement parts precious rare some 8,000 klicks east. Maurice had promised him fully integrated ones, quality fast-twitch polymers and actual foot flexion if he took care of a few little jobs. Nothing important the little Swiss weasel had said. Just a fight here, a little bit of competitive discouragement there.

But he'd come to Maurice missing one arm and barely able to use the other. Half blind in both eyes and walking, but barely, some sort of nanomachine infection eating away at his legs just as surely as a biological infection would.

He'd sacrificed the arm to get free of the rubble, wheezing out Gabriel's name as the Talon strike force had swept in and he'd had to retreat, broken and half-dead, into the winter night.

When he looks at his reflection in the polished metal walls, he winces, at the scarred trail that runs down his side and into the remains of his legs, at the cheap safety-orange hand with its shit haptics absently fondling the harsh yellow bar of soap while the other holds his pants like they belong to someone else. His left eye stutters again and Jack whacks his head back against the wall and lets his pants fall to the floor in a dirty puddle next to his legs.

The shower feels like needles against his skin, and he closes his eyes against the spray as the newscaster drones in the background. The soap lather doesn't sting his eyes as he scrubs it through the silver brush of his hair, and he doesn't feel it as it runs across the ports and framework set in his temple for the visor, or the ones in his back where the rest of his armour interfaces.

Jack pauses with the soap sliding between his legs, lather slick against his cock and for a moment he lets himself entertain the idea of jerking off in the Director's nice shiny shower, but he can't bring himself to put his hands there, so he just takes the rough cloth from a nearby bar and scrubs every inch of himself until he's red.

After everything else, he hoses the legs off as best he can and checks the hydraulics for leaks and then fits them back on. Overhead, the ceiling shakes as the band begins to play, all bass thudding against the plaster. A quick systems check shows power levels are adequate, his back is still fucked up and his fine motor control linkages are not nearly repaired enough for what he's about to do. So he flags everything and gets to work.

Cleanish trousers, armoured chest piece, and finally the visor, he pulls on one by one. His left eye goes blind for a moment and the right flickers before the peripherals kick on and it starts feeding targeting info straight into his visual cortex.

It immediately targets the Director's security as he opens the door and Jack considers the myriad ways he could rip this goon's head off and shove it up his ass as he follows the bigger man to the arena.

He's not prepared for the flashing lights, the driving tempo of the music that goes from a ghostly echo in the corridor to a full bore, head-pounding experience, as a cleanup crew drags what used to be an omnic off the pit floor in a smear of blue ichor.

He's even less prepared for the figure in flesh and metal pumping one fist in the air to the roars of the audience above them.

_Genji Fucking Shimada._


	5. ENTER THE DRAGON

The lights overhead throb like a heartbeat as the singer screams into the microphone in the cage above.

As Jack steps into the pit, the visor lights up with a hundred targets.The screaming crowd of the wealthy and bored and corrupt, Russian politicians, Chinese billionaires and Mongolian oil barons rubbing elbows with local lowlifes.

But in front of him, Genji stands outlined in green in Jack's orange-tinted field of vision as the visor's Overwatch protocols kick into play. He's distracted enough by the surprise that the ninja's on him in a moment and it's only enhanced reflexes that get Jack out of the way in time to keep his head from getting sliced in half. Genji still connects with a surprise palm strike on the swing-thru, and he can feel the visor crack, a flare of pain shooting straight through his optic nerve as his vision stutters and doubles.

"Sparrow in for an early strike!" An announcer shouts overhead, simulcasting in three languages as Jack rolls, barely dodging another strike. "Place your bets, machine and meat battling it out, will it be our champion, Sparrow, or the newcomer, 76?"

Genji comes in fast and high. He's faster than Jack ever was, even in his prime, and speed is a young man's game. Faster, and armed with a sword as long as his leg, whereas Jack realises he thought this was going to be a fistfight.

( _Just beat the guy they put you up against until he doesn't get up again, Maurice had said. That'll earn you the new legs and we'll be even._ ) Jack thinks angrily as he takes a few half-blind, precious seconds to assess the arena like he should have in the beginning.

Lots of junk strewn about. There's nothing more that people like than to see two losers beating each other with old plumbing, and Jack lets Genji drive him backwards until he can stop, drop and roll, grabbing an old pipe.

Genji's faceplate obscures everything but his eyes, but there's a manic light that Jack doesn't like in them. He knows that look, when Gabriel let him off the leash against his family.

And Jack realises that not only does the kid not recognise him under the visor and the scars, but that he'll be dead before he can tell him unless he stops him.

Jack twists, dropping one arm to expose his shoulder, and Genji takes the bait. The blade skips off a corner of his plating and a christmas tree of alert lights flash in the corner of his HUD as the edge bites in and then gets wedged as Jack wrenches his body back.

The pipe swings around in the same motion, cracking Genji in the side of the head with a deafening clang against his headpiece. Jack's had enough concussions in his life to know that Genji's very human brain just sloshed against his very human skull like a tomato against a snow fence.

He also knows that Shimada can take a hit, and his window of opportunity is closing fast. Jack hits him in the sternum (artificial, just over his synthetic heart and vat-grown lungs) hard enough to send his biosynthetic cardiovascular system into a moment of gasping panic, and Genji staggers back, wheezing.

It's enough space for Jack to pry the sword out of his armour and figure out what to do next. He's not a swordsman, and as nice as the weapon is, one that he can't use is more of a liability than not having one at all. Then the kid's red eyes dart towards the sword in his hand, and Jack grins, flinging it behind him like so much refuse.

(It's Jesse's tactic, the only way he could ever beat Genji in sparring practice. Make him so angry he couldn't see straight. Shimada was fast. Was strong. And was ridiculously easy to enrage, a skill that the cowboy had started perfecting right before it had all gone to shit.) When Genji roars indignantly at him, eyes blazing, Jack has to push aside the pang of relief and regret that nothing's changed much for the Shimada boy since then. A pang of guilt, for him and for Jesse. For all the children he thought would take up the torch for them.

It makes him sick in a way he thought he was past, and it's enough of a distraction that Genji's next strike hits him hard enough to crack the chestplate, sending Jack staggering backwards.

Shouting, Genji's on him again in a second and Jack barely catches his punch. The impact explodes those damaged fine motor control linkages and he knows that's going to cost him, even as the kid uses the momentum to swing his leg around.

( _He remembered Gabriel staring at the schematics and rubbing his face. "You want knives in your legs, kid?" "I am a weapon." Genji had rasped from his bed. "I will be a better one than before."_ )

The blade flashes out in the arc of Genji's kick, and instead of blocking, Jack swerves, dropping under his leg and flinging Genji towards the barrier wall.

He's seen the kid fight a thousand times, prays he's right that Genji'll rebound off the barrier and come right back at him. If the crowd's making any noise at all he doesn't hear it, doesn't see the lights overhead, just the split second timing as Genji Shimada twists in midair and ricochets, screaming, off the barrier wall with every intent of ripping Jack's head off.

There's one sound he hears, though, over Genji's enraged scream, and it takes him a fraction of a second to realise it's his own laughter.

At the last second, Jack dodges, grabbing Genji by the hair. It's a cheap trick, but enough to use the boy's momentum against him, swinging up his leg and releasing the hydraulic pressure right into the spot where flesh meets titanium and carbon fibre. The leg's remote sensors scream in Jack's vision as one of the lines ruptures under the impact, but he follows through, slamming the kid into the floor hard enough to fracture the cement. "Stay down, Shimada," Jack growls at him then stumbles back, blind-handing for the sword.

Genji picks himself up, just a little, red eyes blinking owlishly. The audience above them is near-silent as Jack offers the blade, hilt first, with one hand, and reaches out with the other. "Let's call it a draw."

The booing starts the moment Genji takes his hand, and Jack holds it a little tighter than he means to as the younger man staggers.

"Draw," Genji coughs, then flips off the audience with a flourish.


	6. Spark

The "B" card fights after that, Genji staggering out of the pit Jack limping beside him.

Clad in a ridiculously enormous white fur coat that leaves her looking like a spray-tanned show cat, the Director meets them in the corridor, her lacquered lips faintly pursed in a frown. "As amusing as that little slapfight was, boys, my patrons pay to see someone broken. Mister King, Sparrow," she hisses, drawing out Genji's nickname like a threat. "I expected better from at least one of you."

"Life's just full of disappointments," Jack pushes one of her minions aside as his broken leg scrapes ineffectually against the cement with each step. "Maurice sent me here to fight, I fought. We're done." The adrenaline is wearing off with each heartbeat, and he can taste blood in is mouth as he prods his tongue against a tooth he hadn't feel come loose.

"It's not over until there's only one left standing," the Director says sharply, her birdlike hands coiling into bony fists. "But you're both useless in your current state," she smooths her sculptural hairdo, doing noting do dispel the ludicrous show cat imagery now firmly entrenched in Jack's imagination. "Clean up, repair yourselves and we'll do this again tomorrow."

Jack only stares at her, acutely aware of Genji, minute slots in his prosthetics hissing softly as he vents waste heat, standing silently beside him. The Director blinks first, and turns on her heel with a snort.

The visor marks her back in crosshairs as she twirls, waving a dismissive hand in the wake of her retreat.

“I need a full face visor,” Genji laughs suddenly. “It will make staredown contests so much easier.”

Now that they're out of battle, the thought of telling Genji who he is makes the remainder of Jack's blood run cold, and he prays silently as he opens the door to his room that the younger man will keep going. But Genji Shimada has always been a contrary asshole, and Jack doesn't know if he should be relived or not when Genji's human hand touches the back of his neck.

"You're good." Genji purrs, fingertips brushing through Jack's pale hair, leaving shivers in their wake. The last person to touch him was Maurice, making adjustments to one of the input ports for the network of subcutaneous implants peppering what's left of his meat. This is different, warm, and the sensation goes right through Jack's guts as cleanly as that sword would.

There's a surge of emotion that follows, dark and ugly and frightened, and he grabs Genji by the wrist and shoves him into the room. In the dark, Jack hears the scrape of a shuriken sliding out of Genji's artificial hand. "You're good and you called me Shimada. No one here knows that name." The ninja whispers with a practiced sort of sultry danger. (Gabriel's doing. He always believed in a certain level of theatrics and Jack hurts in ways that have noting to do with the fight when he thinks about it.) The shuriken glints against his cheek, and Jack sighs, but doesn't move.

"You always were a pain in the ass," Jack grumbles then, unlatching the combat visor with his twitching fingers. "I always liked that about you." He stands in the shadows, ceiling thudding overhead from the band's muffled bass and the roar of the crowds. His left eye goes blind again for a moment, but he hears Genji gasp.

"Commander Morrison?" Genji's tone shifts completely, and Jack silently pushes past him to drag himself over to the bed, foot catching on the thin carpet. The ninja is there in a flash, and Jack catches Genji's stare as his vision comes back online.

"Morrison died in Geneva," Jack says, feeling a rueful smile twitch on his face as they sit together. Genji's gaze drops to look more closely at the cheap orange muscle fibers on his arms, the spasming of his fingers from the blown motor linkages. "It's just Jack now," he adds softly.

"How did you know I was here?" Genji breathes, undoing his faceplate to look at Jack, something akin to awe carved onto his face as surely as the scars.

Jack pauses. "Believe it or not, a monk told me. Don't look at me like that," he rasps then, pulling away to fumble for his repair kit. "Someone wants you dead, kid. We have to... we. Have to get you..." He looses the thought just as he fumbles the repair kit, but Genji catches it before it hits the ground.

"Jack," Genji slides to his knees in front of him, and gently takes his hand. "That monk has been trying to get me to join his *cult* for months. No one is out to get me. This is all I have now, which is probably better than what you've got." He can feel Genji's touch like white noise through the shit haptics in his hands, and he hates how much he wants to feel it on his skin.

"I was sent here to deliver a beatdown on you, kid. I just didn't know it was you." Jack snaps and tries to wrest his hand away, but Genji's holding him fast. "I'm not gonna leave you here."

"A dead man doesn't get a say in what I do, Mister Morrison," Genji's red eyes turn cold as he lets go of Jack's malfunctioning hand. "And I don't need you to save me."

They stare at each other in silence for a long, uncomfortable beat, then Jack just snorts and falls back on the cheap mattress.

"You're a dumbass sometimes, you know that, kid?" Jack holds his hand up, watching the tissues shiver and twitch. "Do you really want to stay in this shithole?"

Genji blinks, then starts to laugh softly. "You never never did mince words, sir." He teases out the last word, then sits beside him, gathering up the kit. "You know, I still remember the motivational speech you gave us when commander Reyes was getting ready to send Jesse and I out together for the first time."

Jack scowls at him. "Wasn't it something like ' _don't act like dumbasses and you'll be fine. You got this_ ' or something?" He shakes his head. "That was not really my best work."

"It was the way you smiled when you said it," Genj laughs and when he runs his thumb against Jack's jaw, his world contracts to that tiny point of skin against skin. "The way you just smiled now when you said it, you don't even know when you do it. Commander Reyes always warned us about that smile, and I never could say no to that."

Outside the thick walls, Jack can hear the city. Horns blaring, music thumping. There's the smell of exhaust, of animals, of that arid air sweeping off the steppe. Genji smells like sweat and ozone and the acrid reek of waste heat. Jack knows he smells worse than either.

"Mister Shimada, are you trying to seduce me?" Jack asks, and he hates how much he wants this young man, his former agent, his dead husband's murderous little protégé, to keep touching him.

"If it's working, then yes," Genji doesn't smile when he says it, only punctuates the sentence with a kiss, as harsh as any blow he landed in the arena earlier. "Absolutely."


End file.
